Budget draft bounced for revision after protest

Even after laying off 170 central office employees, closing schools and rolling back some employee benefits, the preliminary 2014 budget for the unified school district is still short by some $80 million.

District administrators on Monday shared the draft budget, outlining revenue challenges and rising costs at Shelby County and Memphis City Schools.

Their presentation was followed by a round of protests from parents, teachers and others who filled every seat in MCS Teaching and Learning Academy auditorium, clapping and cheering the succession of speakers.

Although the district hasn't proposed cuts to programs for gifted students, many of the speakers Monday worried that CLUE in MCS and APEX in SCS programs could suffer in the unified district and that school staffing levels would be unacceptable.

"We want education fully funded. Not just the pretties and the nice-to-haves. We want it all," parent Sharon Farley said, summing up the prevailing sentiment.

Keith Williams, president of the Memphis Education Association, complained that the merger process had wasted money on consultants who "have put us in this quagmire." Existing resources are more than adequate, Williams said, to create a world-class education system.

A similar public session is scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday at the 2485 Union facility.

Earlier Monday, members of the unified Memphis and Shelby County school board, reluctant to impose the cuts in the preliminary budget, asked district administrators to come up with a more robust spending plan to take to the County Commission on Feb. 23.

Urged by Commissioner Tomeka Hart and others to focus on what it would take to fund a district true to its educational mission, administrators agreed to go back to the drawing board and create a "world-class" alternative to the preliminary budget, but they warned that the exercise could spill as much as $95 million in additional red ink.

Faced with severe financial headwinds that include the loss of $68 million in city funding, falling enrollment, rising retiree health care costs, dwindling reserves and the like, administrators drafted a preliminary budget with some features that aren't being met with enthusiasm, especially in the suburbs where school staffing levels would shrink.

"My question to administration would be: Where was the consideration around and what would be the impact (of the cuts) to the achievement of students?" Hart said.

"I think it's too easy a way out to say, 'Let's just keep cutting to make the numbers look right without having any kind of discussion about the effect on the students. … I understand we have to look at this as a budget, but our core business is academic achievement."

"I want to know," Hart said, "if we had all the money we need, what would staffing look like? … We need to take the gap to the County Commission … and say 'Here are the things you can cut, and if you don't want to fund it you do the cutting."

"Is this the optimal staffing formula? Absolutely not," said Tim Setterlund, assistant superintendent of Shelby County Schools. An optimal staffing formula, he said, would require "an investment of $95 million more than what we're proposing through these documents. The question is, what do you want to take to the County Commission?"

Commissioner Mary Anne Gibson suggested that the goal of local officials should not be to "adequately fund our children's education, but to abundantly fund it."

Commissioners not only must appeal to the County Commission, she said, but go the community and say, "Folks, this is our time."

" … For our children to have a future, for my grandchildren that I don't even have yet, to come back to our community and live here, this is what we have to do."

Budget architects have tried to avoid impact on classrooms, but among $108 million in proposed efficiency measures, $20.4 million worth of cuts would be felt in the schools.

Cuts also include outsourcing custodial services at a savings of $13 million, an undetermined amount for outsourcing of transportation, a 26 percent reduction in central office staffing that would cost 170 jobs and save $18.1 million, $15 million in employee benefit reductions, $3.3 million for school closings, and $13.5 million for procurement and discretionary spending cuts.

The school staffing reductions — teachers, clerks, librarians and counselors included — produce the most angst among school board members, some of whom are reluctant to sign off on them before the County Commission and other funding sources are given a chance to come up with a more favorable revenue picture.